Do WoW Devs/Executives Just Sit Around and Laugh?
… while counting their money?
I don’t expect every, or any, MMO to be a WoW killer. But it strikes me as a pretty dang sad indictment of the genre that time after time, big budget, major publisher MMOs come out and fail miserably.
Read on for examples that include Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, and Champions Online.
Age of Conan – Over a million sales. Now hovering around 100k subs on life support. Main reasons: horrible system performance, soul crushingly boring post Tortage content, knee jerk nerfs. For more details, see: Review of Age of Conan and Age of Conan is a Hot Mess.
Warhammer Online – Over 1.5 million sales. Now hovering below 100k subs most likely, and may be shut down at any time. Main reasons: only 2 sides in an ongoing realm war game, extreme population, class, and realm balance problems,too much crowd control, and atrocious end game RvR design. For more details, see: What Went Wrong with Warhammer?
Champions Online – Exact sales numbers are not out yet, but CO lost BADLY in September to Aion despite releasing 3 weeks earlier. Aion finished 1st and 5th (5th being the Collectors Edition). CO finished 3rd. The Sims 3 was 2nd. WoW: WotLK was 4th, WoW Battle Chest was was 8th, and vanilla WoW was 10th. But the bigger problem is the fact that usage in CO is down by about 50-70% since mid September, and is currently estimated at about 30k subs.
The rumor is that most of the staff have been moved to Star Trek Online, and CO has a skeleton crew now only. They have been releasing almost weekly knee jerk nerfs, the respec/retcon situation is still a mess, and the Champions Online cash shop/C-Store that opened up this week is a disaster of greed and Roper-style bad ideas.
In total, these three games have 200,000 to 250,000 subscribers or LESS. What a disgrace. These games have major publishers (especially Warhammer – EA, and Champions Online – Atari). World of Warcraft never even has to compete. These pretenders to the throne repeatedly kill themselves.
I think the fundemental thing that killed all these games or at least contributed to their demise was too much focus on cashing in on big trends (WOW and superhero games) and too little attention paid to creating and sticking with a unique game vision.
WOW these days has more in common with a social networking site then anything else, I see it as been like facebook with more game elements. I think the vast majority of the players are there for social reasons – and that isn’t something a “game” can compete with. So in short I think for anything that calls itself a “game” to try and dethrone WOW is just asking for failure.
That’s an excellent point that WoW has become a glorified social network with some game elements.
That is why any game that tries to compete directly with WoW has a seriously extreme challenge ahead of them. You not only have to make a better game, but you have to make a game that is SO MUCH BETTER it is worth it for someone to potentially lose contact with their network of WoW gamer friends.
This is why non-subscription business models make so much sense. They allow people to try the new game for free, and it makes it easier for them to convince their WOW friends to at least give it a shot. The barrier to entry is small, and thus it is POSSIBLY to crack that huge social network wall WoW has.
I think that is how games like Runes of Magic have been able to reac 4-5+ million users.
<blockquote cite="That is why any game that tries to compete directly with WoW has a seriously extreme challenge ahead of them. You not only have to make a better game, but you have to make a game that is SO MUCH BETTER it is worth it for someone to potentially lose contact with their network of WoW gamer friends."
Great point! Just like an incumbent politician has an overwhelming advantage in getting re-elected over a challenger, so too does the incumbent MMO champion WoW which has the same advantage. What company will be able to afford the capital to create the next big thing in MMOs? Probably only Blizzard itself which is sad.
Having no serious competition coupled with exorbitant development costs means that originality and innovation in MMOs will suffer.
As to the point that WoW is a like a social networking site. I suppose that may be true. But why is WoW universally seen as having the worst community in MMO history? Is it possible to have a healthy and robust social networking feel to your MMO but with a horrifically poor community of players?
WoW may have a venomous macro community, but that does not affect people as much as the micro-community – your friends, guildmates, etc.